Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by the deaths of two journalists working for the United Arab Emirates-based news channel Al-Arabiyya in Baghdad last week. These deaths are especially troubling because they occurred just days before the military presented a detailed report on the August death of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana that contained recommendations for creating safer conditions for journalists working in Iraq.
New York, March 19, 2004—Ali al-Khatib, a reporter for the United Arab Emiratesbased satellite news channel Al-Arabiyya who was wounded yesterday when U.S. troops fired on a car carrying four station employees, has died. Al-Arabiyya news director Saleh Negm told CPJ that al-Khatib died in a hospital from a bullet wound to his head. Another…
New York, March 18, 2004—U.S. troops in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, today shot and killed a journalist from the United Arab Emiratesbased satellite news channel Al-Arabiyya and seriously wounded another. Cameraman Ali Abdel-Aziz was fatally shot at a checkpoint in Baghdad. The AP reported that Al-Arabiyya correspondent Ali al-Khatib was also wounded. In a separate incident…
By Ted KoppelThis is not a good day. As I write, pop star Michael Jackson has been arrested for allegedly engaging in sexual misconduct with a minor. His residence cum theme park, “Neverland,” has been invaded by police, sheriff’s deputies, and a team of forensic specialists. I am not empathizing with Michael Jackson, although this…
By Ann CooperIn real-time images, the war in Iraq splashed across television screens worldwide in March, with thousands of journalists covering the U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein and his regime. The conflict and its aftermath had a far-reaching impact on the press and its ability to report the news, with the reverberations felt in some…
While violence and repression against the press continued unabated and even increased in some countries, public trust in journalists and the press suffered in much of the Americas, jeopardizing support for reforms of archaic press laws and opening the door for governments to take a more confrontational approach with the media.
The U.S.-led war in Iraq proved extremely dangerous for journalists. More than a dozen lost their lives reporting there in 2003, and many seasoned war correspondents have called the postwar environment the most risky assignment of their lives. With the demise of Saddam Hussein’s repressive regime, Iraqi media have flourished, but news organizations faced potentially…
The overwhelming issue facing the Philippine press in 2003 was the increasing number of journalists murdered with impunity. In the last year alone, at least five journalists were slain in the course of their work–a toll surpassed only by war-related killings of journalists in Iraq. But in the Philippines, this violence is not a temporary…
The U.S. media went to war in 2003, with both embedded and independent reporters pouring into Iraq to cover the U.S.-led invasion and its aftermath. U.S. officials called the invasion the best-covered conflict in history, but it was also one of the most deadly for journalists. All told, 19 reporters died while working in Iraq,…